How ‘The Shards’ Compares to Real Life in 1980s Los Angeles.

3 min read

Plenty of The Shards, the new FX series based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name, is fictional—even if its protagonist shares a name with the author. But as much as the shiny young L.A. prep-school kids who find themselves in the crosshairs of a bloodthirsty serial killer are made up, not all of their circumstances have been imagined.

“The Shards is exciting because you’re revisiting your own experience, it takes you straight back because of the details,” says a fifth-generation Angeleno who attended the prestigious Marlborough School in the 1980s. “A lot of what happens is part of the universal teenage experience, but in Southern California, our experience was a bit heightened.”

Here, her compares the world of The Shards with the one she remembers.

The Places Courtesy FX

The cast of The Shards gathered at the series’ recreation of the late, lamented L.A. haunt Hamburger Hamlet.

Something Bret Easton Ellis nails in The Shards is remembering the places we all went. I remember Flippers and the Odyssey, where someone would have to take you to get in. There was La Scala, that was maybe on a weekend, but it was a big deal, and you’d go there after you’d gone to Umberto; I can’t believe at 14, my parents were letting me go to Umberto. Bret has an ability with the details of an era, making you relive them, making you feel like you’re still in it. Things like seeing the Go-Go’s at the Whiskey—and I was there—or going to Madame Wong’s for Chinese food, Hamburger Hamlet, Yesterday’s, Postermat, Le Dome. He missed Stan’s Donuts and Aaha, though. The only other note I’d make regarding the book were the umbrellas at the Jonathan Club; they were navy, not teal, and you didn’t call the restaurant the café, it was called the grill. But it got it right about ordering the BLT and the soft serve.

The UniformsCourtesy FX

Graham Campbell, Kaia Gerber, and Homer Gere sporting the uniforms for the Buckley School, which the characters on The Shards attend.

I went to the Marlborough School, which is in Hancock Park. You also had Marymount, which gets referenced at the end of the book of The Shards because that’s where [the character of] Susan finishes high school, and that was the Catholic girls’ school. It’s where Mariska Hargitay went. Marlborough was non-denominational, more old money and legacy families. We wore uniforms, and we got uniform slips if we deviated from the pastel-colored uniforms, gray skirts, and saddle shoes. You also got a uniform slip if you weren’t wearing a slip under your dress—and I remember getting a few of those.

The Parents Ray Mickshaw/FX

Evan Rachel Wood as Liz Schaffer, one of the less-than-stellar parents on The Shards.

It was not my experience that parents were never around. In our crowd, we had family dinners. Parents weren’t absent; you were almost begging them not to be there. You were so excited if your mom decided she didn’t want to be a lady who lunches and got into real estate—that meant you’d come home to some autonomy and wouldn’t have someone hovering. When I went to Marlborough there were a few BMWs in the parking lot, but you had just as many station wagons or Jeep Wagoneers, or someone’s dad’s cool old convertible that they’d restored. Any kid driving a Jaguar was a geek whose parents were trying to make them cool. Once we could drive, though, we did have more freedom. There is truth to that. We were blasting Squeeze or the Police, lighting up clove cigarettes, and skipping school to go watch our boyfriends’ water polo games at Loyola.

The Close Calls Courtesy FX

Igby Rigney and Kaia Gerber, please don’t get into a stranger’s car.

I think about things that we did and I go, oh, my God, how did we survive that? Like once when we were bored at a girls’ sleepover three of us decide to go buy cigarettes or something and—this is the only time in my life I’ve done this—we hitchhiked from Bel Air. Why did that seem like a good thing at the time?

The Bad Behavior Ray Mickshaw/FX

Homer Gere

We weren’t like the kids on The Shards in terms of all the partying, either. Sometimes you would walk into a school bathroom and smell a waft of smoke, but it wasn’t as standard as it seems from The Shards. But I’ll tell you, there was an amazing place on La Cienega called La Cage Aux Folles and after our senior prom, three or four couples went, and this hot swimmer started cutting lines of cocaine at the table. The most beautiful drag queen came up to us and said, “We’re happy to have you here, we want you to have the best night, but to be clear, what happens here is not discussed out there.”

Adam Rathe is Town & Country’s Deputy Features Director, covering film, theater, books, travel, art, philanthropy, and a range of other subjects.